“That’s very generous of you,” Lacey said. “I’ll think about it. While I do, I want the paintings in my possession.” She gave him a double row of teeth. “Considering their surprising value, I’m sure you understand.”
Savoy almost smiled himself. She’d neatly turned his argument back on him and hadn’t promised to sell a single canvas, much less the one that would fit best into his father’s collection. If the old man wasn’t so hard to buy gifts for, Savoy would have been tempted to throw up his hands. But his father was difficult and the son would go a long way to get the occasional pat on the head. Savoy didn’t like that about himself, but he hadn’t been able to change it any more than Bliss had. Both of them still craved their father’s approval on a level too deep to deny or ignore.
“You drive a hard bargain,” Savoy said with equal amounts of approval and irritation. “Seventy-five thousand.”
Lacey looked at his hard eyes and soft smile and wondered how on earth she was going to get out of this without blowing her father’s career straight to hell.
“I’ll think about that, too.” She looked at her watch, then at Goodman. “Now I really have to go.”
Goodman looked at Savoy, who nodded.
As soon as Lacey was out of sight, Savoy went to the plainclothes deputy who had been hanging around the lobby of the hotel just in case someone wanted to see the paintings.
“Did you get photos of her off the security cameras?” Savoy asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then follow her wherever she goes, show the pictures around when she stops, and find out who Ms. Marsh really is.”
Savoy Civic Center
10:30 A.M. Thursday
23
Rory Turner picked up the phone on the second ring. It was his private phone line, the one that didn’t run through his assistant’s desk. The caller ID came back as Moreno County Sheriff’s Department.
“Yeah?” Rory said.
“Deputy Glendower, sir, reporting as requested.”
“Go on.”
“No young woman met the subject, Susa Donovan, at Savoy Hotel. Before she went painting at the Savoy ranch, subject’s escort drove to a shop in Newport Beach called Lost Treasures Found, just off Pacific Coast Highway in the—”
“Put it in the report unless you found Ms. Marsh there.”
“No young woman came out of the shop with the escort, Ian Lapstrake. He was carrying something that looked like a movie poster from an old John Wayne flick. He handled it like it was valuable.”
Rory grunted. If the Forrests started collecting movie posters, he’d care. Until then, he didn’t. “Keep talking.”
“Subject Donovan was then driven to the Savoy ranch, and from there over various ranch roads. At the moment, we’re having an early lunch, since we all were up before dawn.”
“Where are you eating? Last time I checked, there weren’t any fast-food joints on ranch land.”
“Ms. Donovan’s escort was aware of us. He parked and introduced himself. On their second stop they bought enough food for four.”
Rory laughed and silently saluted Susa Donovan’s style. “How long did it take Lapstrake to catch on?”
“Less than two miles on PCH.” Glendower’s voice was rueful. “We didn’t think we were working with a pro or we would have approached the subject in a different manner.”
“No problem. He called me to double-check that you really were deputies instead of wise guys with costume badges. I told him you were real.” Rory hesitated as a thought struck him. “How’s the plainclothes car holding up? Some of those ranch roads are rough.”
“Lapstrake told us we’d need four-wheel drive, so we called ahead. A Savoy ranch vehicle was waiting for us at the south gate.”
“What you’re saying is that Lapstrake’s not trying to lose you or make life hard on you.”
“That’s correct, sir.”
The phone beeped; someone else was trying to call Rory.
“Anything else?” Rory asked.
“No, sir.”
“Keep me posted.”
Before Glendower could answer, Rory broke the connection, picked up the incoming call, and said simply, “Turner.”
“Deputy Mendoza, sir.”
Rory flipped through his mental file and came up with the right man. “You’re on the Savoy Hotel assignment.”
“Yes, sir. At approximately nine-thirty this morning, a young woman calling herself Ms. Marsh asked to have three paintings returned to her.”
Rory’s hand tightened around the phone. “What?”
“She had the correct receipt but no personal identification, so the concierge stalled as instructed. Mr. Goodman came to the hotel and identified the subject as Ms. Marsh.”
Rory thought of all the ways Ward could make his life miserable if the paintings vanished. “Did she take the paintings?”
“Not right away. Savoy Forrest came to the hotel. He told me to print photos of Marsh off the security cameras, then went and talked with Goodman and Marsh. By the time Marsh got the paintings and left, I had the photos and was in place to follow her.”
“Good.”
“She went to a shop a few blocks off PCH in Newport Beach, a place called Lost Treasures Found.”
Rory made a satisfied sound. When the same place showed up twice in one day, a cop could be pretty sure he had his subject’s home ground.
“She parked in back, took the paintings inside, and hasn’t been out since,” Mendoza continued. “I showed the pictures of her around the shops on either side of her business. Some woman wearing crystals and turquoise robes assured me it was Lacey Quinn, a part owner of Lost Treasures Found. Ditto the counterman at the deli down the street. Lacey Quinn comes in there all the time for bagels or sandwiches. Very positive ID.”
“Did you run that name through our computers?”
“Of course, sir. No wants. No warrants. Valid driver, vehicle, and business license. Current voter registration. All the outward signs of a solid, tax-paying citizen.”
“Home address?”
“She lives in an apartment above the shop. Should I continue surveillance?”
Rory thought quickly. Lacey Quinn had the paintings and was at her place of work, which was also her home. There was nothing to suggest that she was going to grab the paintings and run. Even if she did, she wasn’t a rootless street person who would be hard to find.
“Go back into the computer and get all the information you can on her and her business partner,” Rory said. “Find out if she has any family or other close friends. If she bolts, we want to know where to start looking.”
Newport Beach
Thursday evening
24
Lacey fidgeted in front of the mirror and wished that Shayla was home to reassure her that she didn’t look like an impostor wearing a chic black dress and a wonderful rope of crystal and ebony jewelry she’d found at an estate sale. But Shayla was on her way to South America to buy local crafts for their store. Lacey would just have to suck it up and be an adult.
“I don’t feel like an adult,” she muttered at the mirror. “I feel like a teen on her first date. And at the Savoy Hotel’s five-star restaurant, of all places. Good Lord. If Mom and my sisters hadn’t been giving me society-child clothes all these years, I’d be screwed.”
Crystal and ebony swung from her ears as she impatiently twitched the neckline of the dress. Some cleavage was okay, but she really didn’t want an outfit that looked like it was going to slide off her nipples the next time she let out a good sigh.
“Oh, the hell with it. The necklace pretty much hides everything anyway.”
Lacey went to her closet and looked for something warm that wasn’t covered in paint. All she found was an old velvet brocade coat with black lamb’s wool around the collar, cuffs, and hem. The coat itself was a deep cranberry color. Like the jewelry, it would have been fashionable in the 1910s or’20s. Unlike the jewelry, it was wool-lined and warm. She pulled out th
e coat, looked it over critically, and decided that no one would notice the teensy moth holes here and there. Moths had to eat, too, right? Besides, she’d stitched up the worst of them with thread that almost matched the basic material.
She glanced at the clock, sighed, and faced the shoe issue. Not that she didn’t have plenty of shoes. She did. Her mother and her sisters were forever buying pretty instruments of torture for her to wear on her feet. Needle heels and toes to match. Even though the leather was incredibly soft and twice as expensive, her toes cringed at the thought of being crammed together while she tiptoed through an evening. She looked longingly at her scuffed, comfortable sandals, but didn’t reach for them. The coat she could justify on the basis of warmth. There was no justification for the sandals except sullen mulishness.
If it had been a required party thrown by her mother, she might have been a mule. But she didn’t want to embarrass herself—or worse, Susa and Ian—by looking like something out of a church rummage sale. It was grin-and-bear-it time.
“Bother!” Lacey grumbled, grabbing a pair of black heels and glaring at their sleek, uncomfortable style. “Why are there so many useless rules about what to wear to this or that? And why is everything that’s acceptable un comfortable? Who decided that women should wear heels, anyway—the Marquis de Sade?” She sighed and hoped Ian would take her straight to the restaurant, where she could kick off her shoes under the table and wiggle her toes.
The downstairs bell rang, telling Lacey that she couldn’t stall any longer. She pulled on the shoes with their lethal heels, grabbed the vintage beaded envelope purse, shoved her arms into the coat, and headed down the stairs. There were just enough shop lights on to satisfy her insurance carrier. In the semidarkness, Ian’s silhouette loomed black in the doorway. For an instant she remembered her first impression of him: big, broad shoulders, and not necessarily safe.
Then his smile flashed through the plate-glass window in the front door and she felt a giddy kind of happiness bubble through her blood. Only then did she understand how much she’d been looking forward to seeing him again.
You’re getting in over your head, she told herself.
It’s about time, too. Dating myself is really boring.
Lacey unlocked the door and opened it. “Come in. I’ve got to check the locks and stuff, and then we can go.”
“Not so fast. You forgot something.”
She opened her mouth to ask what and then felt his tongue gliding past her lips. She made a humming sound as she leaned toward him and slid her arms beneath his, getting as close to him as her bulky coat allowed. His arms tightened, helping her get nearer, holding her while the kiss burned like a fast fuse leading to an explosion of unknown force.
After a moment or five, Ian forced himself to loosen his grip on Lacey. He lifted his head slowly, with many tiny nips and tastes that made her moan. She returned the sweetly stinging caresses and bit not quite gently on his lower lip. Then she traced his lips with the tip of her tongue and tasted him again, bit him again, shared the full-body shudder that went through him.
“I want you,” he said.
“Same here. If I could hear my brain above my heartbeat, I’d be scared to death.”
His smile flashed again in the gloom. “Me, too. But I’m not so deaf to reason that I’m going to do what I really want to do.”
“Which is?” she whispered.
“Lift you up on that counter, take off your panty hose, and go so deep into you we both want to scream.”
The small sound she made was more exciting than anything he’d known before.
“Is that what you want, Lacey? Right here? Right now?”
“I—I—”
He gave her a quick, hard kiss and released her. “Lock up. Lock up real tight. I’m having a hell of a time remembering that I’m on duty here.”
“Not here you aren’t,” she retorted, but made sure she was three steps away before she spoke. “You’re not guarding anything of mine.”
He blew out a hard breath and wondered why he couldn’t keep his hands off a curly-haired artist in a moth-eaten cranberry coat. Then he decided the why of it all didn’t matter. The attraction was as real as gravity and just as hard to ignore.
“We going out the back or the front?” he asked.
“The back.”
“I’ll lock up out here.”
“Okay. I’m going to check upstairs again. I keep forgetting and leaving the bathroom window open.”
Ian turned toward the front of the shop, then frowned. The windows and glass-pane door that faced the street had a thin line of wire around all the panes, but that sure wasn’t much of a barrier to someone who didn’t mind setting off the burglar alarm.
“You ever think of upgrading your security system?” he called out.
“Why? It’s not like I’m selling diamonds or drugs.”
He heard her heels clicking lightly on the wooden stairs as she came back down.
“You’ve got some valuable stuff in here,” Ian said.
“Only to collectors. The average druggie looking for a quick turnaround isn’t going to haul a movie poster or a reproduction Deco lamp to the local pawnshop.”
He wanted to argue but didn’t for the simple reason that she was right. There wasn’t much in her shop that would appeal to a smash-and-grab hype. Still…
“What about you?” he asked.
“What about me?”
“You’re collectible and should be better protected.”
Lacey gave him a sideways look and a sly smile. “Is that why you’re wearing a gun, to protect yourself from being collected by a person or persons unknown?”
He laughed and gave up the argument—for the moment. As he worked deadbolts and slipped on chains, he made a mental list of some basic security upgrades she really should have. He could get her a good price on everything and the installation would be free. He had several weeks of vacation time stored up and no particular reason to use it, until now. And after he was finished with the wiring and such, maybe she’d like to go up to Bakersfield and meet some other Lapstrakes.
When Ian heard his own thoughts, he fumbled the last lock. Then he reminded himself that while some women had found him sexy, none had wanted a long-term affair, with or without the benefit of marriage. To be honest, he hadn’t wanted that kind of intimacy either—makeup and pink shaving gear in his sink and too much conversation when what he craved was the rushing silence of his small house in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.
“Need some help?” Lacey asked. “One of those deadbolts is sticky.”
“I’ve got it now.”
He slammed the bolt home, followed her to the back of the shop, and waited while she armed the security system—a pathetic one, in his opinion—and shooed him outside during the eight-second grace period before the alarm registered an open door and went off.
“I suppose it’s better than nothing,” he said under his breath.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re not making sense.”
He grinned. “Thank you.”
She rolled her eyes. “C’mon. There’s a pathway between my house and Woo-woo Central.”
“Woo-woo Central? Should I ask?”
“The cosmic calamity next door.”
He looked at the old clapboard building that was barely larger than a double garage and had a bunch of boxes filled with packing material stacked haphazardly around the back and side. Some of the boxes had been wilted by rain. Others were fresh and dry, though torn. All of them came from places like Mystic Crystal of Arkansas or Vortex Stones of Arizona.
“You got something against witches?” he asked, stepping around a pile of shredded paper or straw or whatever that nearly blocked the narrow space between the buildings.
Lacey snorted. “I’m fine with witches. Blessed be and all that. But Lady Marian over there is a real piece of work. Spends her days conning old ladies into her karmic vitamin schemes
and then does vodka shooters and smokes wacky tobaccy all night in the back room.”
“I see what you mean,” he said as he nudged an empty half-gallon booze bottle with his toe. “Doesn’t believe in recycling, does she?”
“Ya think?” Lacey asked dryly as she picked her way through the trash that lay between the two shops.
“Don’t see any of the wacky stuff lying around.”
“You sound disappointed.”
He snickered.
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